field trips, classes, and special events<\/a> throughout Travis County, advocating for conservation through birding.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/IMG_6893.jpg\")
A painted bunting in Brushy Creek Lake Park Credit: Jorge Buendia<\/p>\n
A few weeks after my walk in Brushy Creek Lake Park, I joined Travis Audubon on a field trip to Parque Zaragoza in partnership with the East Austin Conservancy. Looking at the growing group of birders, Roy remarked, \u201cAren\u2019t we lucky. I thought everybody had this.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just a really peaceful way to be out in nature with other people who are interested in nature and spend some time together,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
As Roy and I wandered around Parque Zaragoza, I watched as birders managed to pick out a northern cardinal in a sea of construction noise and human chatter. Amazed by their skills, I tried my hand. It is much harder than it looks to identify one wren\u2019s whistle from another.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Luckily for amateurs like me, apps like the Cornell Lab of Ornithology\u2019s Merlin make it very easy. The app records audio and uses geographic data to tell you the most likely matches. It also offers photo ID, and allows users to input observations.<\/p>\n
Walking through the park, my fellow birders called out what they saw; Travis Audubon has a \u201csee something, say something\u201d policy when it comes to any bird spotting, be it woodpeckers, owls, or even the common grackle.<\/p>\n
\u201cBirding is kind of like walking on the beach looking for seashells,\u201d said frequent Travis Audubon birder Suzanne LaPinta. \u201cOnce you sort of get into it, to me, it just enhances every outdoor activity, because you start to see the birds wherever you are.\u201d LaPinta even keeps binoculars in the center console of her car to search for birds at red lights.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the field trip to Parque Zaragoza, Ann McNair was just eager to be out with the group. \u201cI consider myself pretty novice. I\u2019m not into lists. I\u2019m more here for the people.\u201d McNair said. \u201cThey\u2019ve done a really good job of being intergenerational \u2026 you\u2019ve got 20-year-olds and people in their 80s.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
When I pulled into the parking lot of Brushy Creek Lake Park for Buendia\u2019s walk, I was expecting to find a group of silver-haired retirees. But, just as McNair said, the crew spanned generations, a mix of Gen Z newbies and folks their parents\u2019 age.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some birders, like McNair, picked up birding to connect with nature in a meaningful way. For others, it really is about the birds. Buendia \u2013 who started the weekly Birding 101 Walk a few months ago, after his close-up photos of local birds gained major traction on Reddit \u2013 is one of those. Though he considers himself a \u201chobbyist,\u201d he has an encyclopedic recall of different birds in the area. As I followed him through the park, the group\u2019s eager leader remarked on the etymology of bird names and the distinctions across species of wrens and chickadees.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/bird1.jpg\")
A Travis Audubon field trip in Parque Zaragoza Credit: Sarah Andrews<\/p>\n
Buendia thinks that birding should be accessible to anyone intrigued by the chirps of local songbirds or the impressive wingspans of turkey vultures. To him, it is all about paying attention to the sounds, sights, and quiet moments of nature \u2013 that\u2019s where the beauty lies. His advice for novice birders is to listen a little closer: \u201cTry to ignore everything else; just separate that one little sound.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Brushy Creek Lake Park, we trudged under the Palmer Lane bridge. It was booming with highway noise and smelled like swampy, still water. Under the noisy overpass, as no-see-ums swarmed my hair and my feet sank further into the mud, I was growing anxious to keep moving along. Then, Buendia pointed out the hundreds of barn swallows making mud nests under the eaves of the bridge. The other birders and I, armed with binoculars, looked up in awe at the flock; above our heads, a whole world was swarming and bustling.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There, under the bridge and craning my neck to the sky, I began to understand the art of noticing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A note to readers:\u00a0Bold and uncensored,\u00a0The Austin Chronicle\u00a0has been Austin\u2019s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community\u2019s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Walking through Cedar Park, ankle-deep in mud, I am learning how to look up. Above my head, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,136323,1551,136324,136325],"class_list":["post-386808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-east-austin-conservancy","tag-feature","tag-jorge-buendia","tag-travis-audubon-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}